But the leaders of the various financial regulatory agencies already meet regularly at the offices of the State Council, which is China’s cabinet, although these meetings are not officially at the level of a commission.

Some economists speculated in the final days before the two-day conference that at least the State Council meetings would be moved to the central bank. Allowing the central bank to serve tea and provide a conference room might give the central bank staff a little extra confidence by allowing them to negotiate as hosts. The central bank also has a history of advocating broader financial reforms than the other principal financial regulatory agencies: the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

But the leaders did not even move the meetings away from the State Council’s offices to the central bank. And the result of the conference fell far short of predictions that the regulatory agencies might become clearly subservient to the central bank.

The statement that accompanied the end of the conference did mention that the central bank had a role to play in preventing systemic financial risk. That is already the role of central banks in many countries. But Gary Liu, the president of the China Financial Reform Institute, a research group based in Shanghai, said that the specific mention of it in the statement might strengthen the central bank’s hand somewhat.

But he was skeptical of the new commission, noting that it would lack legal powers and have very few staff members. “China failed to achieve a real breakthrough in financial regulatory reform, and the rising conflicts between financial regulation and financial realities will continue to create troubles in the coming years,” Mr. Liu said.

Overall debt has been soaring in China, and Moody’s Investors Service downgraded China’s sovereign debt rating by a notch on May 24 on concerns that China has struggled to contain further increases in that debt. Chinese officials are quick to acknowledge the importance of financial health to the Chinese economy, which has become the world’s second-largest economy after the United States’, with extensive links to practically every other country around the world.

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State-controlled media carried a statement that described President Xi Jinping of China as having said at the conference, “Finance is an important core competitiveness of the country, financial security is an important part of national security, and the financial system is an important economic and social development of the basic system.”

The apparently meager results from the conference underline not just bureaucratic resistance to change, which Mr. Xi probably has the political muscle to overcome, but the very real and complex policy dilemmas facing China.

One example lies in the vast, lightly regulated off-balance-sheet activities of Chinese banks, which Mizuho Securities calculated on Friday to be roughly equal to the entire assets on the balance sheets of the banking industry. Regulators in the West would probably force banks to move these activities as quickly as possible onto their balance sheets, which would probably have the effect of curtailing them.

But many of these off-balance-sheet activities, like various kinds of loan guarantees, are crucial to providing financing for China’s vigorous small and medium-size enterprises. These smaller businesses have had little luck competing with large, state-owned enterprises for conventional bank loans. But they account for the bulk of the job creation in China, at a time when the government is trying to slim down chronically loss-making industries like steel manufacturing and coal mining that are also big employers.

Other financial regulatory disputes in China involve bureaucratic turf issues. One question lies in how to modernize China’s antiquated securities law, which still applies only to stocks and bonds and lacks provisions to cover the more complex instruments issued these days by insurance companies, banks, online lenders and other types of financial institutions.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission has pushed hard for the broadest possible definition of securities, which would give it much greater influence. The banking and insurance regulators have resisted this, contending that many of the new financial instruments are extensions of banking and insurance.

One mystery left unresolved by the statement at the end of the conference lies in who will run the top financial regulatory agencies in the years ahead, particularly the central bank.

Zhou Xiaochuan has been the governor of the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, since 2002, making him one of the world’s longest-serving central bankers. Mr. Zhou is already more than two years past the usual retirement age for Chinese officials at his level. He received a special dispensation from the usual age limits by being allowed to join a senior government advisory body that is exempt from age limits.

A version of this article appears in print on July 16, 2017, on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Chinese Financial Meeting Yields Meager Results. Order Reprints|Today’s Paper|Subscribe